CHAPTER 26 (3)
But I’m more than capable of handling Timothy Adams. So, I lean my head back against his chest and close my eyes. The bass in the club pulses through my heels. The pounding music drowns out everything between us, shakes loose the hurt and feelings until there’s no room for anything but this moment. Sweating, wanting, moving, living. My fingers trace the hard forearm banding around my waist, the lines of ink. “You got a tattoo.” Timothy’s face bends close to mine, and my breath hitches as his lips graze my temple. “More than one. You want to see them?” The crowd presses in on us, and I sense Andie, Rica, Jacob, and others. Friends and strangers. Celebration and oblivion. I want to disappear into it. “Yes,” I whisper. The hair above the neck of his shirt is damp. Not quite long enough to tug. Some part of me wants to try anyway. His lips graze my ear, and I tilt my chin back as they drag down my jaw. Heat streaks between my thighs, weaves a rope of need that joins us together, as I move against him in the dark. He’s moving too, holding me, pressing against me. We’re action, reaction. Like musicians who’ve never played together, attuned to each other because this melody we’re weaving depends on it. There’s nothing outside this club. My beautiful boy, my twisted muse, my rebel prince is gone, but the man holding me is here. He doesn’t give an inch, hands possessive on my hips, holding me against his hardness. I have a sudden vision of Timothy dragging me into one of these dark corners, yanking up my skirt, and fucking me to the driving rhythm of the bass, our sounds swallowed up by the music around us. I turn my face more to meet his gaze, and his expression hits me square in the gut. His lashes are half-lowered, his jaw tight with restraint and hunger, those dangerous eyes filled with emotion I can’t read in the dark. When Timothy speaks again, it’s a vibration against my hair. “Seventy-eight.” I focus on the warmth of his skin through his shirt, the steady echo of his heartbeat. “Seventy-eight what?” “Seventy-eight times I wrote to you and didn’t send them. Once I even drove to Dallas to see you.” My fingers freeze in shock on his neck, and my hips stop swaying under his hands. Timothy came to see me? Emotions blur together in my chest, my stomach, each one colliding with the next—grief, sadness, love, gratitude. I blink back the sudden stinging. He doesn’t get to say that as if it can make everything better. He can’t take back that he left. We can’t go back to a time when we were innocent and wanting. I’ll never again be that earnest girl, and he won’t be that guarded boy. In the DJ booth, I see Rica watching the crowd. At the bar, Andie’s talking with Jacob, their gazes flicking to us, then away. Once more, I start to move to the music. I cover Timothy’s hands with my smaller ones, threading my fingers in the spaces between his and squeezing them. I pull one hand off me and bring it to my lips, pressing an open-mouthed kiss to his palm. I feel his reluctant groan against my back. I do the same with the other palm, rubbing my ass against him at the same time. This time, his teeth capture my earlobe, making me shiver. “You’re teasing me.” “Then ask me to stop.” I turn my profile toward him, rewarded by his hot mouth on my cheek, trailing dangerously close to the corner of my lips. “No.” His breath mingles with mine. “I want you.” I take a moment to feel those words settle into my body. My arousal swells, throbbing like the music around us. I want him too. But that’s not what this is about, and wanting was never our problem. I turn to face him, pulling out of his hold. His tortured expression is full of desire and something more meaningful. It’s that something that calls to me, that has me second-guessing my plan. I ignore it and lift my chin, my heart still hammering in my chest as I take a steadying breath. “Good. Now you know what it feels like.” It takes every bit of self-control in me to turn and walk away without looking back.
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